Spanky

What is so far fetched about Toto's statement that he has to "provide evidence" to back it up? Do you honestly think that Christian Scholars have the purest of motives, enough so that they welcome dissent and skepticism? I don't. I live in a world, in a reality where Christianity is untenable, scholars/believers live in that same reality, and they choose to believe. I was a minister once, I hid my skepticisms until it blew up inside me. Surely there are others, even in scholarly positions, that do the same. No?

Solitary Man

What are you blabbing about? Have you even ever been to a biblical studies convention? Have you ever stepped foot inside an SBL convention? Welcome dissent? What dissent?! Christian scholars don't run the establishment. Some of the most famous names are not even Christian. Welcome skepticism? For a minister, you must never have really known Christian scholars, did you?

angelo

. To a lesser degreeYou could no longer live a lie? There are many others. Paul Tillich, Tom Hapour, John Shelby Spong immediately come to mind. To a lesser degree, Karen Armstrong. And I'd bet there are thousands of ministers thruout the world who feel the same, but hey, it's a living.

Jeffrey Gibson

Name them. Toto says that the existence of such scholars/historians of Christianity is a not only a known fact, not a supposition, but a widely known fact (something everybody knows). So it should be easy for you to do so.

Name them.

Jeffrey

angelo

The scholars/historians of christianity are to numerous to list. But none of them posses a time machine. So each one may infuse his study with his/her's opinion, perhaps sub-conciously without realizing it. Then what is there to study? The N/T? The Roman/Pagan writers of the time? Nearly none mention any Jesus. And most were writing within a time frame of a century from when Jesus is supposed to have lived.
The only Roman writers to refer to anything of interest were, Pliny, Suetonius and Tacitus, who were writing at the beginning of the second century.
Need I remind how a legend becomes a fact over time? Robin Hood is a perfect example.

mountainman

There are claims that these writers referred to something
of interest, well and truly after the "fact", however there
are numerous counter-claims from a range of scholarly opinion
that these authors works were interpolated by "later hands".


Josephus Flavius - The Testimonium Flavianum, Antiquity of the Jews
Tacitus - Annals 15:44, and directly related to this, also:
Suetonius - Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Nero, 16.
Pliny the Younger - Plinius, Ep 10:97; a letter to the Roman Emperor Trajan
Emperor Trajan - Dear Pliny (a rescript)
Marcus Aurelius - The "christian" reference at Meditations 11:3
Hegesippus - The "shadowy Hegesippus" according to Momigliano
Celsus: Fourth Century Eusebian forgery of anti-christian writings
Lucian of Samosata - Life of Peregrine, Alexander the Prophet
The Vienne/Lyon Martyrs' Letter - Probable suspect of forgery ... Eusebius.
Origen - Perhaps he was an expert on the Hebrew Texts (alone).
Porphyry: Fourth Century Eusebian forgery of anti-christian writings.


There are many pathways by which legend become fact.
In ancient times one of these is by supreme imperial decree.

As a top-down emperor cult, Christianity had
an immediate presence in the imperial court.
Sponsored by the Boss of the Roman Empire.
Who is going to argue legends and facts with the Boss?

Arius of Alexandria?



Best wishes


Pete Brown

angelo

Constantine has a lot to answer for. Had he not converted, christianity would have gone the same way as the gods of Mt Olympus.

mountainman

Most BC&H scholarship avoids mentioning the influence
of Constantine, since major recognition has generally been
given to conjectures about the emergence of christianity
in the centuries which preceeded him.

In ancient historical terms, the world's foremost scholars
have convinced themselves that Constantine played his
part in christian origins during the end game of the origins.

Not one scholar has questioned whether Constantine simply
fabricated a totally false account of the opening game, and
simply fabricated the bible by binding a series of totallly
ficititious new testament accounts, in Greek, to the extant
Greek version of the LXX, which he had probably found at
the library in Rome, c.312 CE.

There is a long list of historical evidence which tells us
in no uncertain terms that Constantine is to be regarded
as a military supremacist and malevolent despot. A dictator.
A robber and a brigand of the ancient Hellenic temples,

Lord Acton warned about the fact that power corrupts, and
that absolute power corrupts absolutely. He also warns
about the times when people who have the mentality of
gangsters are in control. The author of "War is a Racket"
describes the actions of military supremacists "at war".

Constantine was "at war". I do not believe for one moment
Constantine was a religious man, or that he believed himself,
for one moment (except possibly in his final days 337CE) in
the HISTORY of the top-down emperor cult which he had
fabricated and created.

Constantine's was a military mind. He never lost a battle.
He secured his territories. He operated on accumulating
intelligence. He acquired informed lists of his territories,
and he implemented taxation measures - Chrysargyron.

Chrysargyron was a poll tax per person.

However, the hardest hitting comments from an
ancient historian IMO have come from Arnaldo
Momigliano, who survived or rather escaped the
fascist rise under Mussolini and went on to become
one of the foremost in his field last century.

Momigliano is Jewish, and a totally straight-faced
historian, uses the word "miracle" to describe the
emergence of christianity under Constantine.

You have to understand that Momigliano below
is using strong irony .... what can be possibly mean?



Why does such a man as Momigliano use the word "miracle"?
He knew only too well that the victory, as described by Gibbon,
for example, was certainly no miracle. Constantine was
a great military commander, was very well prepared for
the military exercise, and in fact never lost a battle
in his 30 years at the top. So there was nothing at
all "miraculous" in the military victory.

It is as if Momigliano is saying "hint", "hint".
Almost "wink, wink, say no more ...".

But indeed why?

And as if to highlight this, on the following page (p.80)
of the work, Momigliano makes a second reference to
this "miracle". This only serves to highlight something
about what Momigliano is saying, or not saying. The
expanded context of this quote is as follows:


COnstantine invented christian history.
He bravadoed his way through with bullshit.
He had the total and absolute military power.

His sons, and future emperors simply retained
the power and eventually destroyed all evidence
that connected the history of christianity with
its fabrication by Constantine.


We have a brief account of the fiction by Emperor
Julian 362 CE, and then reports of it under the
accounts of Nestorius ex-archbishop of The City
of Constantine, but then all such accounts are
of course burnt out and silenced.


BC&H Scholars use Constantine's Eusebius to make
their conjectures about early christian chronology
and history. A lonely and wandering path of fiction
set in place by Eusebius under orders from the Boss.

I would not buy a used chariot off Eusebius,
let alone think for one moment that the book
which he prepared and edited, the Bible, under
orders of a military supremacist, represents
anything but 4th century political propaganda
from a psychotic Pontifex Maximus.



Best wishes,


Pete Brown

angelo

Thank you for that excelente article Pete Brown. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's accurate and says it all.

Regards Angelo.